Review of the environmental and organisational implications of cloud computing: final report.

Cloud computing – where elastic computing resources are delivered over the Internet by external service providers – is generating significant interest within HE and FE. In the cloud computing business model, organisations or individuals contract with a cloud computing service provider on a pay-per-use basis to access data centres, application software or web services from any location. This provides an elasticity of provision which the customer can scale up or down to meet demand. This form of utility computing potentially opens up a new paradigm in the provision of IT to support administrative and educational functions within HE and FE. Further, the economies of scale and increasingly energy efficient data centre technologies which underpin cloud services means that cloud solutions may also have a positive impact on carbon footprints. In response to the growing interest in cloud computing within UK HE and FE, JISC commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a Review of the Environmental and Organisational Implications of Cloud Computing in Higher and Further Education [19]

Enhancing and managing individual and group creativity through off-task breaks

Moments of insight have played a key role in the evolution of technology over the decades. But how can these ephemeral and enigmatic ‘eureka’ events be managed? This chapter explores the role played by off-task breaks in triggering key cognitive and social processes underpinning creativity. By breaking up the working day with low effort routine tasks and breaks, individuals can significantly enhance their creativity. So taking time away from the job becomes the key link in the creativity process. This research therefore points to the careful management of off-task breaks during the innovation process

Hiring to Maintain Mission

This article is a direct outgrowth of the appearance of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the need for Catholic colleges and universities to address their hiring practices in order to maintain their identity as Catholic institutions of higher learning. The author draws a parallel between the personal philosophy of individuals within the community and the perceived, if not real, institutional philosophy of the college or university as Catholic. Catholic institutions can lose their souls while climbing the ladder of success and prestige simply because they have paid insufficient attention to the question of the philosophical fit between their employees and their espoused Catholic mission and philosophy. Hiring the right people will determine, in the long run, whether a Catholic college retains its Catholic identity in fact or in theory

Development interventions reconsidered: USAID in Zimbabwe

Masters of Arts Dissertation Submission Department of Political Studies University of the Witwatersrand 9 Aprll199

Evidence-Based or Just Good for the Soul? Examining the Efficacy of Peer Tutoring in College

As peer tutoring programs have become pervasive on college campuses, it has become common to hear their benefits extolled. The goal of this paper is to examine the literature to determine in what ways accessing peer tutoring may impact college students. Specifically, the dual lenses of cognitive development and the generation and conversion of academic and social capital are employed to limit the scope of the research and focus the analysis. Conclusions include that while “peer tutoring” lacks a commonly accepted definition, students may receive intellectual benefits and their social networks may be broadened when accessing services that are intentionally structured. These ideas are connected to institutional mission statements and stated goals

SOCIAL LEARNING IN THE CO-CURRICULUM: EXPLORING GROUP PEER TUTORING IN COLLEGE

In a time of upheaval in American higher education, student retention continues to be a chief concern on most campuses. Peer tutoring, like other peer-based programming, is asked to serve multiple functions as a low-cost, high-impact model. This study explored the cultures of these semi-structured, co-curricular, academic-social spaces and sought to understand what happens in a group peer tutoring context that impacts students. Data was generated with students on two campuses during the spring 2014 semester using a two-phase qualitative approach. Data generating activities included observation of students and peer tutors in the tutoring spaces on each campus. The second phase of data generation included focus groups with more than 30 students on each campus. Findings suggest that the student participants on these two campuses conceive of tutoring spaces as unique, that they engage with their peers in such contexts differently than they do in other places, and that programmatic structures may influence the outcomes they achieve. Implications range from contributions to more nuanced understanding of social learning theory to the critical importance of vulnerability in student help-seeking behavior

Entrepreneurial learning; intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing

Purpose Despite an increasing number of publications focusing on the phenomenon of entrepreneurial learning, it is still unclear how this learning process differs from wider organizational learning. This paper addresses this gap by highlighting four key processual dimensions unique to entrepreneurial learning; intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing. Approach Drawing on various conceptual and empirical papers published in this area over the last 20 years, common threads in the literature are identified, which point towards these four key dimensions of entrepreneurial learning. Findings It is thus argued that the ability of the entrepreneurial team to learn form and adapt to changes in the external market involves all four dimensions of intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing. Intuiting involves drawing on prior knowledge to create new opportunity sets, and skills. These ideas and skills are then tested in the market, through scanning and market research. Internalizing allows the entrepreneurial team to question taken for granted assumptions, as existing ways of working and views of the world are continually adapted. Finally, routinization is the process whereby the entrepreneurial team accumulates a situated knowledge of the changing world around them, and in the process, frees up valuable cognitive resources, needed in the continual process of intuiting, scanning and internalizing. Originality/value It is argued that the adaptability of entrepreneurial ventures hinges on all four processual dimensions

Finding collective strength in collective despair; exploring the link between generic critical feedback and student performance

Whilst formative feedback has been highlighted as a key element in both student satisfaction and learning, research highlights the dissatisfaction of both tutors and students with its effectiveness in improving performance. This study tracks changes in undergraduate student satisfaction and performance across three cohorts in response to variations in group-level feedback. The findings of the study show that an increased level of generic critical feedback targeted at the group had a positive impact on individual student performance, but a corresponding negative impact of student satisfaction scores. Thus, whilst the student cohort experienced a sense of collective despair, this did not constrain their ability to change and adapt to the feedback given. It is argued that instead of triggering a process of self-reflection and peer comparison, the group feedback given, increased team spirit and collective action, resulting in improved academic buoyancy and performance

Group Creativity and Time of the Day

In today’s knowledge-based economies, creativity in higher education has become a central focus for policy-makers. However, developing student creativity is still a challenge for higher education institutions. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the creative processes at play in educational environments by using an experimental design to explore the time-of-day effect on group creativity. Examining 36 groups of university students, Experiment 1 explored differences in creative performance between morning and afternoon, and the optimal time of day for group creative exercises. Experiment 2 comprised 18 groups, and further studied the effect of chronotype on group creativity in the morning versus the afternoon. In both experiments a significant relationship was found between the timing of the group task and creative performance, with a peak in creative fluency around midday. This research thus points to a significant time of day effect in the creative process in groups